(Arts & Entertainment

Stranger In A Strange Land

New York Jewish filmmaker's prize-winning,
naturalistic thriller is set in the Ozarks.

Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News

A

riveting drama set in the Ozark
Mountains, Winter's Bone has such
a strong sense of place and is so
steeped in backwoods mores, that it's hard
to believe that it was directed by a Jewish
urbanite. Until you meet Debra Granik.
"Visual anthro-
pology is a huge
draw for me,
always looking
at lives that are
different from
my own',' the
Manhattan film-
Winter's Bone director maker explains.
"It's not an alien-
Debra Granik
ation from who I
am necessarily; in addition to who I am, I'm
curious about these other life experiences:"
There's a vast difference between
Granik's world and that of Ree Dolly
(Jennifer Lawrence), the stubborn 17-
year-old protagonist of Winter's Bone who
takes matters into her own hands when
her far-from-ideal father's disappearance
puts the family's house in jeopardy.
Granik, co-writer with Anne Rosellini
of the screenplay, which won a Waldo Salt
Screenwriting Award, couldn't help feeling

42ws

via

Nate Bloom
I Special to the Jewish News

Theater Notes

Two women with
strong local ties
were omitted from
my recent Tony
Award coverage:
Marcia Milgrom
Dodge and Wendy
Marcia
C. Goldberg.
Milgrom Dodge
Dodge, 55,
who grew up in
Southfield, is a
theater director,
choreographer and
writer. A revival of
the musical ver-
sion of Ragtime,
directed by Dodge,
Wendy C.
was mounted at the
Goldberg
Kennedy Center in
Washington, D.C., early in 2009, and
the show moved to Broadway last
October. Dodge was Tony nominated

52

June 24 • 2010

like a stranger in a strange land from her
first scouting trip in southern Missouri with
Daniel Woodrell, author of the source novel.
"Being a Jewish person in the Bible Belt
is intense,' the thirtysomething director
says. "When you leave New York, where
like a bazillion people have my genetic
prototype, of course you are going to feel
some sense of otherness because you have
now walked into a place where you are
much more of a minority."
Winter's Bone took the Grand Jury Prize
at Sundance in January, providing a nifty
bookend to the Best Director Award that
Granik won at the 2004 festival for Down
to the Bone, her feature debut starring Vera
Farmiga (Up In the Air) as a mother with a
drug problem.
Granik, who grew up in suburban
Washington, D.C., and went to Brandeis,
moved to Boston after graduation to work
in educational films and documentaries.
After a few years, she enrolled in New York
University's graduate film program to
pursue narrative filmmaking. Two for two
at Sundance, Granik is as golden as any
director in the indie film scene.
Yet it's a documentary that she shot,
Thunder in Guyana, that gets Granik espe-
cially excited. The 2003 film profiled direc-
tor Suzanne Wasserman's cousin, Janet
Rosenberg Jagan, an American Jew who

for best director of a musical, and the
show got five other nominations.
Goldberg, who grew up in
Farmington, is the artistic direc-
tor of the Eugene O'Neill Theater in
Waterford, Conn. The theater was this
year's winner of the Regional Tony
Award, which is presented annually to
an outstanding not-for-profit theater
outside New York City.
Mike Nichols, 79, who has won six
Tony Awards for best director of a
play or musical, is also, of course, a
famous, Oscar-winning film director.
On Saturday, June 26, a tape of the
(June 11) American Film Institute gala
tribute to Nichols will be shown on the
TV Land cable station (9 p.m., with
an encore showing Sunday at 4 p.m.).
An amazing number of "A" list stars
showed up, and many spoke. Here
are two of the many highlights — Art
Garfunkel and Paul Simon opened
the tribute with "Mrs. Robinson,"
the theme song from the film The
Graduate, which Nichols directed.

moved to Guyana during
World War II and eventually
became prime minister and
president in the late 1990s.
"Janet Jagan fed all parts
Ashlee Thompson (Ashlee), Jennifer Lawrence (Ree
of my pantheon of what
Dolly) and Isaiah Stone (Sonny) in Winter's Bone
makes me respect some-
one,' Granik effuses. "I loved
sibility. She also accepts that peering into
her radical politicsi loved that she had to
another world goes both ways.
go [through] full cycles of exploring certain
"My curiosity about other's people lives
forms of social justice. She had to make a
is such that it is only right and appropriate
profound break with her family at some
that they would be curious about mine as
point, and then she had to forge forward to a
Granik admits. "I have to be open to
very unknown place, make her way and stick that even though for me it's a lot easier to
to her lifelong convictions:'
be the person asking the questions."
Closer to home, Granik's great-grand-
At the same time, Granik allows that she
mother, who came over from the Old
keeps one card close to her chest.
Country as a child and lived on New York
"All my life I've absorbed anxiety about
City's Lower East Side, holds a central
what generalized negative thoughts people
position in the pantheon.
may have about Jews:' she says. "I've trav-
"My positive affinity with being Jewish
eled extensively, and I make sure people
was with this 4-foot person who had gone
really get to know me. [Being Jewish] is
through huge historical times of migra-
not the first thing I disclose about myself
tion and had been a really courageous
at all, because I want to make sure that
person in my book, and my life," Granik
people don't use that as a filtration?' ❑
recalls. "She was a positive link to an eth-
nic identity that I couldn't get [from] the
Winter's Bone is scheduled to open
Washington scene of affluent Jewish sub-
Friday, June 25, at the Landmark
urban assimilation."
Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield
Granik notes that being an outsider, as
Township. Check your local movie
she was in the Ozarks, and telling a story
listings. (248) 263-2111.
about a community is a serious respon-

Director-actress Elaine May, 78, who
was in a comedy duo with Nichols in
the '50s, referenced a recent PBS fam-
ily history program in her gala speech.
The show's researchers confirmed that
Albert Einstein was a distant cousin
of Nichols. May said: "Einstein was a
very sad man when he died because
he hadn't achieved a Combined Field
Theory ... But if he's watching tonight
— he's got to be immensely happy that
he's Mike Nichols' cousin." (Nichols,
by the way, attended the salute to
American Jewish Heritage reception
held at the White House on May 27.)

On the Big Screen

Grown Ups is a comedy of a familiar
sort — a group of guys who won a
junior high basketball championship
reunite at the memorial service for
their childhood coach. They then
spend the Fourth of July weekend,
with their wives and children, at a
nearby lake house. They compare
quirks and exchange comic zingers.

Adam Sandler, 45,
who co-wrote the
flick, co-stars, with
Salma Hayek as his
wife. Also co-starring
are Rob Schneider,
Maya Rudolph, Kevin
James, David Spade
Adam Sandler
and Mario Bello.
Solitary Man, which opens the same
day, is a lot darker comedy. Michael
Douglas, 66, plays Ben Kalmen, who
was once a very successful car dealer.
Kalmen can't seem to stop himself
from drifting downward through bad
life choices.
He isn't a nice guy
— but he is sometimes
likable rogue. Jesse
Eisenberg, 26, co-
stars as a college stu-
dent who sees Kalmen
as a mentor. Co-
stars include Susan
Jesse
Sarandon and Mary-
Eisenberg
Louise Parker.

❑